Scott Speed Reflects on Aborted F1 Career
Scott Speed has declared himself happy to have lived the dream of Formula 1, despite the aborted nature of his time with Toro Rosso.
Speed became the first American in more than a decade to make it to F1 after signing for the Red Bull ‘B’ team in 2006, making the most of his links with the drinks giant to secure a place in the new Toro Rosso squad alongside Tonio Liuzzi.
Having failed to score a point in his debut season, Speed returned for 2007 but a spectacular fall-out with team principal Franz Tost following the European Grand Prix saw him leave the team, with Sebastian Vettel coming in to replace him.
Speed has since gone on to forge a career racing back in the States and has taken four wins to date in the ARCA stock car series as well as one victory in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Admitting he views stock car competition as something of a personal challenge, Speed said he was happy with how his 28 race F1 career had panned out, despite achieving ‘nothing’ during his time in the sport.
“Formula One was always my dream, always way above NASCAR,” he told USA Today. “In my mind, I have accomplished what I’m going to in my life. This [stock car racing] is a personal challenge. If I don’t make it, I wouldn’t feel any worse than if I did, honestly.
“I did absolutely nothing in F1, but I’m 1,000 per cent satisfied. It’s like going to college of the world. I never went to college, but I know a lot because I had the opportunity to live in Europe and travel the world.”
Car & Driver has an excellent account of the Speed/Tost bust-up that included Tost punching Speed.
The same mag has a piece on Speeds history leading up to, and while in F1 that includes this classic line that relates to his ongoing health problems:
“Are you kidding? I was wearing a diaper!”
A very funny line, but for those unaware he’s fighting a serious and lifelong health issue, the second link is also a recommended read.
NOTE: The image is the aftermath of the chaos during the rain plagued 2007 European Grand Prix. Although running a career high sixth (due to some serendipitous chicane chicanery) a screwed-up pitstop found him buried in the field when the rain turned into a torrent. Speed, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Liuzzi, Adrian Sutil, and Nico Rosberg all aquaplaned into the Turn One gravel trap.
There are two sides to this story. One is that he was lucky enough to have Red Bull fund his junior career, most drivers struggle for funding. Although, for the life of me, I will never understand why he was so rapidly moved up from FRenault to GP2, he essentially by-passed F3.
His record in the junior formulas was not stellas, but he was also fighting illness.
Both he & Luizzi wasted their first year at STR, with a fully developed version of the previous years Red Bull. Both drivers (with a rev restricted V10) spent the year spinning off, something that Webber & Klien had not done with the same car.
By all accounts, Scott’s confrontational personality was another hinderance in his development.
IMHO, he was a reasonable pilot in OW, but was never going to be a front runner. Same goes for Luizzi, who had even more years of F3000 with which to hone his skills, and yet still underperformed.
How can you judge the driver’s talents when in a non-competitive car, in a team run by boneheads? Look at Rosberg, Button, etc., are they now dog drivers as well?
I agree with your conclusion that he was probably moved up too fast and needed more open wheel seasoning before F1.
Glad to see Speed do well in ARCA and hopefully we’ll get to see more of him in Nationwide and Cup in the future.
How about judging Speed on his A1GP performance George?
He certainly wasn’t in an uncompetitive car, to the contrary, he was in identical machinery as the rest and his ass sucked buttermilk.
His single top 3 qual effort was spoiled after being taken out on the first corner of the first lap. Everything after that was mid pack in both quals and races.
That said, I’m glad he’s done so well and have little doubt with Red Bull’s deep pockets they will field a third Sprint Cup team for him in 2009.
Red Bull’s entire driver development programme is often hard to understand.
Another example was Klien, thrown from F3 straight into a Jaguar seat before he was ready. Then after he adapted to F1, they still threw him overboard.
From what I have heard, RB’s driver manager, Helmut Marko, is very erratic. Anybody who could lose JPM, who had just lost the F3000 title in his rookie season, by one & a half points, only to see him join Supa Nova for a second crack at the title must have rocks in his head.